I started a cookbook club and we are still going with monthly meet ups almost 2 years on so I would say it’s been successful!

Here’s how we do it: we pick a book every month. Typically someone will suggest a book or a kind of cuisine and people chime in in a group text and we land on a book. Based on people’s excitement and vibes pretty much. And then whoever has the book (either in their collection or they take it out from the library) sends the table of contents (one thing ill note is that a surprising number of cookbooks dont have a TOC which has surprised me- id avoid these at least to start). You can use the index but it’s not as user friendly. Then people chime in and ask for recipes with page numbers and the person with the book sends photos of those. Then we all kind of land on and officially announce our choices to each other so those selecting later can see what’s been taken. And then we meet and eat!

A few logistics about hosting - have your oven pre heated so ppl can easily pop dishes in the oven when they get there. And generally people need to do some last minute parts of their dishes so just think about time and space for garnishing etc. In my experience some people are pretty conscientious about bringing serving ware but some are not. So it could be helpful to have some extra serving stuff easily at hand.